As a little girl my parents let me sleep under the church pews.
When our church stripped away the pews, I took my Sunday-service-naps to Dad’s shoulder. Correction: I napped on his arm since I wasn’t tall enough to reach his shoulder. He never rebuked me for sleeping in church.
I just remember feeling warm and secure. I will always remember his warm, gentle hand moving my sleeping head to his arm whenever it slipped. Little did I realize that his thick-skinned hands were the same hands which had comforted so many people in hard times.
Over the last 30 years, my father has dedicated his life to the practice of medicine. Not just in a perfunctory, pay-the-bills sort of way. But truly as a calling to offer healing and alleviate suffering.
In gratitude, I’m dedicating the next 2,000 words to bits and pieces of his story and reflecting on his 30 years in practice. Here’s to you, Dad.
An unlikely start
In 1986, 18-year-old Charles “Chuck” Page sat hunched in a broom closet, studying.
The overpowering smell of cleaner filled the small room, keeping him awake. He spread his study notes out and copied the information again and again.
The closet belonged to Jean, the school janitor.
Jean let Page hide away from the rest of Austin College here and study. Page had to — had to — pass his pre-med college classes. He couldn’t afford to fail another exam.
Some months earlier, his academic advisor had sat him down for some stern advice. “Listen, I know your SAT scores,” he said. “You’re not gonna make it. Why don’t you just quit now and do something else?”
Page had already failed his first math test in a class he needed to continue his pre-medicine track. Now, he wondered if his advisor was right.
“On paper,” Page said, “He was right.”
Page didn’t seem like the likeliest candidate to become a doctor. He grew up in Canton, Texas, tending trees and budding roses with his dad, Charles Ray “Bud” Page, a landscaper. And before the younger Page accepted Christ at 16, he wanted to become a rockstar.
He spent hours in his room, shredding his guitar. But then, God took hold of his heart. Over time, a different desire started to take root.
Page wanted to care for sick people and help make them well. He still remembers the day he told his dad he wanted to be a doctor, an entirely new career path for someone in his family.“Are you sure, son?” Bud asked. “You can always stay and work with me. But we’ll support you—whatever you decide to do.”
And they did. Page had made up his mind to become a doctor, and his parents set to work figuring out how to make that happen.
Bud went straight to their family doctor, John Turner, for advice. Turner’s father had been the one who delivered Bud into the world. Now, Bud asked Turner for his recommendation on where to send his son for school.
Turner’s reply: Austin College in Sherman, Texas.
A few days before classes started, Bud’s wife, Linda, took their son to visit Austin College’s admissions office.
But, Page had missed the deadline to enroll. “School’s fixin’ to start,” Bud recalls their response. “We can’t do that.”
But Linda wasn’t about to take no for an answer. She started plucking $100 bills out of her wallet and laying them on the counter. Admissions changed their minds.
After his parents had worked so hard to help him get to school, Page didn’t want to disappoint them. He had spent a lot of time praying and considering his chosen course of study, and he wasn’t about to back down now. Instead, he decided to drop his math class and focus on the other three classes he was taking.
But those classes weren’t smooth sailing, either. The first day Page walked into his biology class, the professor kicked off the semester with a bold statement: “Evolution is a fact. Period.”
Similar to the math course, Page failed his first biology test, earning a 69. After explaining his situation to the professor, the professor went over the test with him question by question. Page knew the answers, and the professor bumped his grade to an 87.
Over time, Page learned how to study more effectively, starting with copying his notes in the janitor’s closet. Four years later, he graduated with his Bachelor of Science in 1990.
After college, he was accepted into Baylor College of Medicine in 1990. Page moved to Houston for residency, working under the famed Michael DeBakey. DeBakey pioneered many cardiac procedures and designed the first vascular graft, which creates a new pathway for blood during surgery.
At first, Page didn’t know what kind of doctor he wanted to be. But then he watched a surgeon performing a heterotopic heart transplant—sewing one heart onto the other. The patient’s failing heart couldn’t be removed from his body. If they tried, he wouldn’t survive.
As the surgeon stitched, Page listened. The heartbeat’s single bum… bum… doubled to a bum… lub-dub, lub-dub…bum… lub-dub: the combined sounds of the good and bad heart.
“This is what I have to do,” Page thought. “I can’t live if I don’t do this. ”Witnessing both those hearts beating at the same time, Page just knew. This was it. He had to be a surgeon.
He understood surgery would be hard work, but he already knew how to work with his hands. Now, instead of tending rose bushes, he’d be caring for people and their bodies.
Beyond the shift
The early hours of Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, showed a green sky in Nacogdoches, Texas.
Page bolted out the front door of his home with a coffee in his hand, wearing blue scrubs and a blue suit jacket. He hopped in his daughter’s recently repaired car and rumbled down the winding, gravel driveway. The car swayed left and right as it went over the cattle guard.
He was off to an 8:00 a.m. surgery at Memorial Hospital. The work keeps him busy, and though medicine has changed, he still loves caring for his patients all these years later.
Now 57, Page has taken on medical students who shadow him in his independent practice. Working with students and newer surgeons, he’s noticed a shift in patient care. “The practice of medicine has become shift work,” Page said. And that’s not a good thing for patients, he said.
Patient care has evolved as practicing medicine has become portable, he said. Nurses and surgeons can move around and practice at hospitals in different states. They take a shift at the hospital, then retire for the day.
“The general attitude today is that when the doctor or nurse’s shift is over — it’s over,” Page said. “You’re off. You leave.”
He said this is a significant generational divide. Old school doctors didn’t feel entitled to this same nine to five routine.
“There was a sense of responsibility, a sense of ownership, a sense of relationship,” he said.
Page still exhibits this spirit in his practice. And it shows. Though Page’s surgery wasn’t scheduled until 8 a.m., the hospital was already calling him to check on a patient whose surgeon left town because his shift ended.
Page wasn’t even supposed to be on-call. To him, the “shift” approach to medicine, which hospitals enable, leaves doctors like him cleaning up after others when an unmet medical need arises. He believes this erodes the all-important trust in the doctor-patient relationship.
A doctor’s goal should be to care for a patient before, during, and after surgery. But Page said that isn’t the case anymore for a lot of surgeons.
Since he doesn’t work for the hospital, Page is able to speak up when he thinks things should run differently. He can hold hospitals accountable if they aren’t meeting the right standard of patient care. He can speak freely without worrying about his paycheck.
Hospital-employed doctors don’t have that freedom, he said. They often fear speaking out against hospitals, especially with job security on the line. So, they usually just move on if theyhave a problem. But surgeons like Page are deeply rooted in their communities—and they are in it for the long haul.
And that can create some conflict with hospital staff. “They have to deal with me,” Page said. It’s a scenario that can threaten their sense of control, he said. But things weren’t always that way. “In years past, it used to be a very good relationship where it was a team,” he added.
Doctors and hospitals held each other accountable. “The difference is when people come into the hospital now,” he said, “They’re cared for by a system—not a doctor. It’s a team of doctors that really work for the hospital and not for the patient.”
Not so with Page. “I’m there to serve my patients,” he said.
Building patient trust
Page’s patient care resembles what one might expect from an old school country doctor. He asks about family and jobs. No laptop in front of him; he just listens.
Page’s patients come from all kinds of demographics and are dealing with all kinds of conditions: the elderly, people with rare cancers, blue-collar workers, kids, and prisoners. Sometimes, they can’t even afford to pay him for the surgeries they need.
He tailors his approach in the examining room to each unique patient.
Behind Door 3 at Page’s office, a woman sat on the examining bed. Her face was drawn with anxiety. Her middle-aged mother sat in another chair, listening as Page asked questions in Spanish, then switched back to English.
Where was she having pain? Page asked gently.
The woman placed her hand on the right side of her abdomen, and described her symptoms: constipation and bloating.
“Let me take out your gallbladder,” Page concluded.
The patient looked at her mom—not what she wanted to hear. She and Page kept talking for a few more minutes. “I can tell you’re not ready,” he said. “Go home, talk about it with your mom, and we can talk again next week.”
A few hours later, another patient entered Door 3.
The tall and wiry man managed a winery an hour from Nacogdoches. That must be why he was so healthy, Page said. On previous visits, the man had shared his story with Page: the routine of running a winery, and the deep tragedy of losing his wife and child in a car accident a few years ago.
This interaction was notably different from Page’s earlier consult with the woman needing gallbladder surgery. The nervous woman needed time to build trust with Page. The winerymanager had already established that. By now, he knew Page as more than a doctor, but also a friend.
Trust is everything, Page said. And that often takes time and care to develop. Some patients trust Page completely right away. He jokes that if he suggested sewing their head on backwards, they’d say, “When we goin,’ Doc?”
Others never fully trust him, in spite of his best efforts, Page said. He used to think he could win everyone’s confidence, but he’s learned that’s not always possible. In those cases, it’s often better to refer those patients elsewhere. With the high-risk operations Page conducts, it’s critical for him to have patients who trust him through the process.
Dorothy Kelley is just such a patient.
Now in her 80s, Kelley has fierce brown eyes, grey hair, and pinched quivering lips belying her stubborn resilience. Throughout her life she has endured a lot: parental abuse, a fatal brain tumor, and even temporary brain death for 23 minutes.
When no doctor would operate on her because the operation was too risky, Page did. And he has been her surgeon for more than 10 years. Over that time, he learned about her family: her son and daughter who are drug addicts and the restraining order she had put on her daughter recently. Page understands these emotional and spiritual wounds in a person’s life are just as worthy of care and attention as the needs of their bodies that bring them to his office.
He doesn’t scold them when they get off topic during an appointment. He listens.
During one such recent appointment, Kelley shared her concern with Page about an upcoming surgery. She was afraid she might never wake up. “You’re gonna be alright,” Page assured her. “If I didn’t think you’d make it through, I wouldn’t do it.”
He paused. That wasn’t all he had to say. He stood up and moved to a closer chair.
“I gotta talk to you,” he said. “I love you and I wouldn’t hurt you for anything in the world, but I have to talk to you. You have to keep your daughter away from you—your daughter is more of a threat to your health than the disease and problem that you have. Promise me.”
Kelley looks back on that day and loves Page for being her doctor and friend.
Lessons from surgery
Some patients come into Page’s office, believing they aren’t supposed to have pain and suffering, that hardship is an exception. But after Page’s 30-year career, he knows that isn’t a realistic expectation for anyone. “Pain and suffering is part of life,” he said.
But there are other times patients were expected to die, yet have miraculous outcomes. He said no one will ever fully understand God’s ways or works. “There’s our part, God’s part, and the patient’s part as far as health,” he said.
Page said he used to over emphasize his part of that process. But, over the years, he’s realized how much of healing is beyond his control. Of course, he wants to do good surgery, do the rightthing for the right reason, with the right team, with the right preparation, with the right tools — that’s his part.
But the outcome? That’s God’s part.
Page can give people medicines and perform surgery. He can even remove a patient’s intestines and sew them back together. But he can’t make them heal. “There’s a factor greater than me involved in that process,” he said. “That’s God’s part.”
It’s a lesson that’s served Page well outside the surgery room as he’s spent the past 27 years raising and supporting his five kids: Jacob, Jonathan, Georgia, Jane, and Charlie. He knows their futures are outside his control, too.
“We’ll support you — whatever you decide to do,” he said to each.
His oldest is in law school, the second is pursuing teaching, the third works for a lobbying firm, the fourth is a writer and the fifth a high school tennis player.
I (Jane) don’t sleep under the pews anymore. But I still rely on my dad for that same gentle encouragement. Before I went to college, he wrote me a note: “I’m praying you are given a God- given dream.”
Though I don’t know what that dream is, I find myself thinking about something he once told me. Through God, all things are possible. Not always easy, he said. But possible.
